7/13/2012

Let’s pretend that a man enters your house without your permission. Then he breaks one of your dinner plates.

When you complain, you are told: “What’s the big deal? You broke one of your dinner plates last month.”

You might say: “But this is different! I didn’t invite this guy into my house! And anyway, just entering my house without permission is a crime to begin with!”

Most people would understand this argument.

But when an illegal immigrant enters this country, and then does something wrong — like, say, killing somebody — the argument from illegal immigration supporters is always the same. They will ask: “Are illegal immigrants more likely than citizens to kill people?”

Our border patrol is told to run, hide, and worst case scenario, throw rocks when illegals/drug cartel members are shooting at them with AK-47′s. Meanwhile, our police officers are kicking in the wrong doors and shooting blindly at shadows in the night when dealing with our own citizens.

My only question is, why the hell would they want to come here in the first place? You’ve got a better chance surviving being a drug mule than you do living next door to someone who sells pot. At least the border patrol don’t shoot first.

I think it’s part and parcel of the discussion. By claiming it’s a different discussion somewhat moves the goal posts.

He may have inadvertently dropped the plate. Accidents happen. But he did not have the right to be outside in the first place. Having not broken that law would have precluded him from ever entering the house and breaking a plate that belonged to someone else.

Mr. Feets – You forgot the part about the plate breaker, intentional or not, entering the house without permission, perhaps that was intentional on your part. Maybe we could talk about mitigation steps for that.

Illegal immigrant convicted of DUI and driving without a license kills a young high school girl when his SUV careens out of control. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/07/the-suv-did-it.php
She was sitting on the lawn of her high school for chrissake Mr Happy, and he had 2 prior offenses. Come on man, you’ve got to be kidding about morals.

Illegal immigrant convicted of DUI and driving without a license kills a young high school girl when his SUV careens out of control. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/07/the-suv-did-it.php
She was sitting on the lawn of her high school for chrissake Mr Happy, and he had 2 prior offenses. Come on man, you’ve got to be kidding about morals.

I suspect, though I do not know for a fact, that they’re at least marginally less likely to be miscreants than our fellow Americans, and I say this because they came here because they want to be here, and to prosper here

I suspect, though I do not know for a fact, that they’re at least marginally less likely to be miscreants than our fellow Americans, and I say this because they came here because they want to be here, and to prosper here

==why not extra penalties for committing a felony while being in the country illegally==

Fine. You will need a completely new and different justice department and also to outlaw sanctuary cities. You will need to be able to see people’s “papers” to determine their immigration status without being sued for discrimination. (See: Brewer, Jan) Other than that—

since prevention is cheaper than punishment, we should concentrate on keeping illegals, regardless of their source, out of the country.

first off, dry up the demand: charge and fine all the homeowners who wouldn’t have housekeepers, nannies, gardeners and all the other staff they currently do if they had to pay American wages, benefits and taxes to said staff. collect the back taxes and pay down the debt with them.

secondly, enforce loitering laws on street corners, parks, home improvement stores and anywhere else “day laborers” gather. anyone who comes up as illegal gets deported forthwith. Anyone who stops and solicits such help gets hit with a charge similar to soliciting prostitution. this dries up the supply.

third: illegals get zero benefits. none, zilch, nada, and, if they have an anchor baby, collect the kid’s fingerprints, retinal scans, dna sample, etc, and send him home with his parents to be raised in the loving arms of his family and their wonderful native culture. if they want to come back after they turn 18, they can apply at the local consulate for repatriation.

as for the particular problem in Mexico, where the gangs and the institutional governmental corruption make it impossible for the average person to get ahead, just do a similar id data collection of every adult over 18, then give them a half day block of instruction on the care and feeding of the AK-47, then drop them off in groups in their various home states with one, 7 loaded 30 round mags, some web gear and two canteens and tell them to take care of their own business on that side of the border, because if they cross ours again, they are unlawful combatants and, under the laws of land warfare, can be summarily executed as such.

The immigrants who love their families and deserve respect go to the trouble of coming here legally as my wife’s family did. The ones who cut in line and come here illegally are not people wanting to be Americans and join our communities, they are criminals without respect for our country or our laws.

Everyone should have carpet on their floors to stop the plates from breaking. Or we should set up a training program at the border for plate handling classes. And if that doesn’t work they have guns from fast and furious to shoot the plate owners. Case solved.

If this country would round up all the crimaliens, the job market would improve, wages would increase and the country would be safer. No more programs for these border dwellers. How about programs for citizens of America who have lost their jobs to cut rate illegal trespassers, I mean plate breakers.

To my mind the only argument against enforcement and reform (in that order) of the immigration laws is that Mexico’s second (or third, depending on who’s doing the stats) source of wealth is money sent ‘home’ from the U.S.. Now, take that away, and what happens? I suspect that successive Administrations have soft-peddled enforcement because they don’t want to find out. Mexico has been tottering on the brink of collapse for decades, and when it goes completely it’s likely to be a mess. A mess that will undoubtedly spill across the border and affect us. Historically, the only solution to such a problem that has any track record of working has been conquest, which is off the table for a variety of political reasons.

I think the strongest argument against non-enforcement of the immigration laws is the way that it creates a large sub-culture in economic and legal limbo. This is unfair to the immigrants; it leads directly to their exploitation. It also creates a population that is unlikely to cooperate with authorities looking for genuine threats such as terrorist cells. In short the existence of an illegal population within out borders is nothing but trouble for everybody but those who would exploit them economically or politically. Such exploiters are the scum of the earth, and I specifically include the race-pimps who claim to be on the side of the immigrants.

Illegal immigrants’ misconduct or mishaps that result in pain and suffering to legal residents and citizens is incremental. It does not replace other such events by legal residents and citizens, it increases the actual number of them.

If those immigrants who are the trigger for those events were not here, those events would not have happened.

They create incremental risks not just because their existence represents additional risk creators, but they create slightly different risks due to the nature of their entry. They arrive already breaking the law in an ongoing and continuous manner which creates an acceptance of that lawbreaking in their own minds and in their own communities. That works against society’s need that its members mostly comply with the law.

This is not to say there are not positive effects created also. Some overcome the above effect and the only laws they ignore are the immigration laws, Some contribute very meaningfully to our society. But on balance I believe the overall effect is significantly negative.

We could achieve a larger balance of those positive affects by creating a better immigration system that allowed in the ones that will shift the balance to positive and remove the big initial lawbreaker mindset from the bulk.

first off, dry up the demand: charge and fine all the homeowners who wouldn’t have housekeepers, nannies, gardeners and all the other staff…

Lots of people say this. But this is not how the law works.

A man comes to you because you have a job to offer. You ask for his driver’s license and social security card. The documents might look fake–or they might have someone else’s name and he has complicated reason for why. It seems clear to you he is likely illegal, so—

If you refuse to hire him, and he complains, the Federal government will sue you for discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and you will have to prove to the satisfaction of a court that you gave all applicants’ documents the same scrutiny. However, if you accept his documents, no matter how obviously bogus, Title VII gives you immunity from this lawsuit.

You do not wish to be sued so you accept the documents and submit his SSN for verification as you are supposed to, and in the meantime he goes to work. And SSA says there’s no such number, or the number is not associated with his name.

If, at this point, you fire him, and he complains, the Federal government will sue you for discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and you will have to prove to the satisfaction of a court that you treated all employees in a similar situation in the same way. However, if you allow him to work, Title VII gives you immunity from this lawsuit.

The most you can do, without being exposed to a discrimination lawsuit, is ask the employee to contact SSA to sort it out.

It’s very easy to say, punish people who hire illegals. But Title VII is interpreted so that people who refuse to hire illegals may be sued for discrimination, and people who do hire illegals are immune from these lawsuits.

In other words, the government has been subverting the intent of these laws for years.

Illegal aliens are breaking the law and either taking a job from a citizen, exploiting our social safety net, or engaged in criminal enterprise, or some combination of activities detrimental to our country.

Either we control our borders or we lose our identity as an independent nation. Acquiescence to illegal immigration is a one-way street to the rule of the mob, the loss of self-determination, and the devolution of individual rights.

To me, the ultimate kick in the face — the one thing that spooks and exasperates me more (much more) than anything else — is that this issue is closely intertwined with the following:

diversity.umsl.edu: While the U.S. Hispanic population has more than doubled since 1980 (Hobbs and Stoops, 2002), the number of Hispanics participating in college has only grown by 5 percent during the same time period, far less than the participation growth experienced by whites (14%) and African Americans (11%) during the same time period (Harvey, 2003).

Research on Latinos in the aggregate as well as on the Chicano subpopulation reveals that their representation in post-secondary education has lagged behind that of other racial and ethnic populations in the United States. For many years, Chicanos have been considered to be the most unlikely racial/ethnic group to finish high school, to attend college, and to graduate (Delgado Bernal, 1999; Gándara, 1994; Chapa, 1991).

[W]hile the college enrollment of Hispanic students is on the rise, a study of 1996-2001 undergraduate data shows that Hispanics are half as likely as their white peers to complete a bachelor’s degree (Fry, 2005a).

Recent data also reveal that the 5-year college completion rate of Hispanic students declined slightly during the 1990s. Among degree-seeking Hispanic students who enrolled in college during the 1989-1990 academic year, 44 percent completed a bachelor’s degree after five years; among the Hispanics who enrolled in college during the 1995-96 academic year, 42 percent completed a bachelor’s degree after five years, a decline of two percentage points (Harvey and Anderson, 2005).

When examining the entire U.S. adult population, Hispanics continue to be the least likely of any ethnic group to have earned a bachelor’s degree. The percentage of Hispanics in 2000 aged 25 or older with at least a bachelor’s degree was 10.4 percent, slightly lower than American Indians (11.5%), lower than Blacks (14.3%) and considerably lower than whites (26.1%) and Asian/Pacific Islanders (44.1%) (NCES, 2003).

Utilizing National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) data coupled with a college qualification index developed by Berkner and Chavez (1997), a study by Swail and colleagues (2004) found that nearly 59 percent of Latino students were characterized as “not qualified” for postsecondary education, as compared to 41 percent of white students and 32 percent of Asian American students (Swail et al, 2004). Only African American students, at 63 percent, had a higher percentage of students that were characterized as “not qualified” for college.

On average, the standardized test scores of Latino students, along with those of African American students, are found to be consistently lower than the test scores of white and Asian students, and the reasons for this test score gap have been long debated by educational leaders and researchers (Schmidt and Camara, 2004; Jencks and Phillips, 1998).

This study doesn’t even detail the way these particular trends apparently continue generation after generation. Therefore, the US is facing a bright, brilliant, wonderful, beautiful future.

Thomas Brom’s “Let Them In, Over Taken By Events – O-B-E” [California Lawyer, August 2008] is spin. Spin out of control. First, America already generously Let’s Them In, granting legal resident status and naturalized citizenship every year, to about 2.5 million immigrants. Significantly more than any other nation.

Second, Mr. Brom’s “Let Them In” theme reminded me of the callous quip about a woman getting raped: “Hey, why fight it, just sit back, relax and enjoy it.” That theory’s a non-starter, readily proven again by the 1993 rape, then murder, of Jennifer Ertman (14) and Elizabeth Pena (16), by illegal alien gang member Jose Ernesto Medellin (now 33). Texas just executed him. More recent, there’s SF’s triple murder of the Bologna family in June 2008, LA’s murder of Jamiel Shaw, Jr., in March 2008, and Newark’s execution-style murders of three college students in August 2007. (Illustrative, not exhaustive.) All the product of insane sanctuary city policies coddling and harboring convicted criminal illegal aliens. City, county, state and fed officials all have blood on their hands.

Third, Mr. Brom’s piece referred to three books advocating open borders, published in 2007-8. I call Mr. Brom and raise him: Michelle Malkin’s Invasion (2002), Victor Davis Hanson’s Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (2003) and Pat Buchanan’s State of Emergency (2006).

Fourth, what happened to – the Rule of Law? That America is a nation of laws, not men. That no man is above the law, and that’s what separates America from the rest of the world. Let them in? Open borders? Strange arguments coming from a lawyers’ magazine, but guess we’re just living in the world of Superman Bizarro.

Fifth, we have not been O-B-E, but in fact have had decades of deceit, denial, dysfunction and dereliction of duty (maybe by design NAFTA, NAU, SPP), from all three branches of our federal government. Example: Plyler v. Doe, 457 US 202 (1982), a 5/4 Brennan opinion that admitted the fed’s total failure on illegal immigration, flew in the face of Fong Yu Ting (cited in Brom’s piece, but curiously absent from Plyler), opened the floodgates (see fnt. 2 in Plyler dissent, estimating 3-12 million illegal aliens as of 1981), and denied Texas the natural law remedy of self help. Then California’s Prop 187, torpedoed by a single federal judge. Example: the 1986 bi-partisan Simpson-Mizzoli bill that graciously gave amnesty to 3 million+ illegal aliens, and promised American citizens that it would be – a one-time fix. Can you say Shamnesty? Because that was a fraud, fixed nothing and spawned another 12-20 million+ illegals. Example: the recent 5/4 USSC opinions of Boumediene v. Bush and Dada v. Mukasey, foolishly giving more rights and opening further our courts, to terrorist combatants and illegals, thus making even longer ques for Americans to use their own courts. (See “[Fed] Circuit Judges Decry Immigration Case ‘Tsunami’” by Tony Mauro, 8/12/08 Legal Times and “New Nightmare Census Projections Reveal CHAIN MIGRATION Still Choking Our Future” by Roy Beck, 8/14/08 NumbersUSA.) Example: The dereliction of Presidents Carter to G.W. Bush on this issue, most notably their failure to prosecute cheating employers who hire illegals and refuse to use E-Verify.

Separation of powers, the so-called checks & balances? Phooey! The Rule of Law? Phooey! We are trillions in debt, yet the politicos and judges never ask, who or how we will pay for their frolics. We get the shaft from all three branches, plus we get to pay the “check” for the actually not so cheaper labor. The same is true for too many state, county and city governments/officials (sanctuary cities); the media (Mr. Brom’s own “It’s why an editor… may choose to bury a story rather than put it on the front page.”); and, the big corp bandits & pirates (that out-source American jobs, hire the illegals and push for more H-1B visas to in-source more foreign workers). The Dems want more voters; the Repubs (and US Chamber of Commerce) want cheap labor. It can be argued, we are well down the road to anarchy. (See HBO’s “The Second Civil War” (1997).) But the Will of the People has always been clear: STOP IT! Most recently rising up to stop the bogus bi-partisan “comprehensive” shamnesty bill. Yet all ever required was leadership and integrity. To simply apply reason, enforce our existing laws, and follow the advice of Deputy Barney Fife (of Andy of Mayberry): “Nip it. Nip it. Nip it in the bud.” The situation then would have been – the problem that never was.

But that takes courage. Instead, our politicos have chosen to pick the low hanging fruit, and to come up with one scam, scheme and bogus compromise, after another. We must look in the mirror. We must ask: Are we still capable of governing ourselves? Because at present, America has no real Rule of Law – with 12-20 million illegal aliens, it would be foolish to argue otherwise. Fact is, everything has been reduced to politics. Because if baseball used to be America’s pastime, it can be readily argued that today, our pastime now is – lying, cheating, stealing & spin. And it’s everywhere. And it’s destroying our American constitution, country, communities, culture and courts. And it’s killing us.

Emotionally it feels worse when someone like that commits a crime against you because in additional to the normal feelings of violation of your person, you feel let down by your government. Maybe the person might have got in anyway by legal process but in this case it would feel as if the government had been doing its job, the person would not have been here in the first place.

In California, the largest increase in illegal immigration is from Asia. There are a lot of people from China and India, for example, who arrive on a legitimate visa and just stay. Mexicans illegals are actually leaving according to several articles I have read. One in the Sacramento Bee showed something like 10,000 or 20,000 fewer illegals in that area.

We do need immigration but only when we have a growing economy. We have a President who appears to be doing whatever he can to do the maximum possible economic damage. Right NOW we don’t need any or much immigration. Until we have jobs for them, there is no reason for them to come, really. But once we do, they are a rather vital part of the economy.

I think the politicians are leaving the borders porous for three reasons. First, and simplist, they are being bribed to do so. Second, garnering illegal voters.

Third, to increase crime in the US to increase support for things like having to show papers, gun control, militarization of the police, increasing power of the police, etc.

Oddly, several extremely wealthy individuals support the third point. Including one individual who helped the SS gather jews for the gas chambers in exchange for not being killed and for a share of the loot. He somehow skipped out before the Germans were able to properly show their appreciation for his help. Too bad, that.

Crosspatch, I think people from places like China and India can create an economy. They have the skill sets and attitude that lets them find the loop holes and weak points in the over and mis regulation causing the current hard times here in the US. They, unfortunately, do not have the attitudes needed to break us off the path to tyranny.

This overall question of the post becomes almost moot when a death occurs and the local authorities refuse from the get-go to check on immigrant status of the one behind the wheel. Why don’t other drivers have the right to be protected, first and foremost? Just as legal voters should have their right to a safe and secure vote – before anyone else, so should the legal drivers of our state be protected at all costs. Find out who is legally permitted to drive/vote, and protect our citizens. Why is that so difficult? We have become disenfranchised in our own home.

The driver of the pickup, Juan Tzun Lopez, 24, of Riverside, is being investigated for vehicular manslaughter without negligence, said Officer Steve Carapia, spokesman for the Highway Patrol’s Riverside office. Lopez is not licensed to drive, Carapia said.

Upon being repeatedly questioned about it, the Public Safety reporter for the newspaper replied,

The CHP told me that they would not be checking his immigration status. Also, he has never held a California driver’s license.

The article adds this,

The driver of the truck that killed the Sheriff’s Dispatcher is not licensed to drive – and has never been licensed to drive.

In general terms, regardless of the particulars of a nation’s economy, I think a society will do better in the long run if it both comprises and attracts a lot of talented, skilled (and socially stable and reliable) people.

I’ve heard some observers (mostly of the left, but a fair share of those on the right too) rationalize away the controversy of illegal immigration by claiming that many “undocumented” immigrants don’t exactly sit around all day eating bon bons and watching daytime TV. Those commentators sometimes cite the hand-to-mouth, long-hours existence of much of the populace in nations like Mexico.

In broad terms, such observations are correct. But people who push that meme then fail to note that basic industriousness — of and by itself — doesn’t necessarily translate into a better, enviable society.

The following hints at how the synergy of this country’s economy will be negatively impacted if too much of the populace not only doesn’t take seriously the role of basic education, but then shrugs at the idea (or reality) of students treating schools lightly — if not also cynically or disdainfully — and, worse of all, casually dropping out before completing, say, the 10th grade.

online.wsj.com, November 2011:

Union Pacific struggles to find enough electricians who have worked with diesel engines. Manufacturers in many places can’t find enough machinists. Oil companies must fight for a limited supply of drilling-rig workers.

“There’s a tremendous shortage of skilled workers,” said Craig Giffi, a vice chairman of the consulting firm Deloitte. A recent survey it did found that 83% of manufacturers reported a moderate or severe shortage of skilled production workers to hire.

Pay levels provide evidence. While hourly wages in the broad category of maintenance and repair workers rose 6.4% from 2007 to 2010, increases were 10% in the subcategory of heavy-vehicle mechanics and 15% for specialists in electrical repairs on commercial and industrial equipment. The implication is that employers were competing for a limited pool of qualified workers.

AAR Corp., a Chicago-based aviation-parts manufacturer, has 600 job openings, mostly for skilled trade jobs like welders and maintenance mechanics. Chief Executive David Storch said the shortage of workers has forced the company to pass up business and delay some manufacturing work. He said the company would like to start a third shift at its Indianapolis aircraft maintenance facility but has been unable to do so because of worker shortages.

A skilled-worker shortage can even darken the jobs picture for the less-skilled, because companies that can’t expand production for lack of enough skilled workers may not need as many salespeople, forklift drivers or janitors. They may buy fewer parts, potentially affecting the size of their suppliers’ work force.

Replacing [skilled workers who are now retiring] has been a challenge for a number of reasons: an erosion of vocational education at the high-school level, a reduction of in-house training through companies and unions, a now-vanished construction boom that once gave people well-paying jobs without the need for much training, among other things.

Perhaps most significant is that the well-publicized decline of the country’s manufacturing sector has made blue-collar careers appear less stable and attractive. Another Deloitte survey found that although a large majority of the public thinks it is important for the U.S. to have a strong manufacturing sector, barely a third would encourage their children to pursue a manufacturing career.

Adding to the fact that said “drivers” have never been tested on rules of the road or had a vision test in order to be legally licensed as safe to be behind the wheel in this country, many of said drivers can not read English and are therefore unable to understand the content of road signs and digital warning/info banners that identify construction zones, detours, and emergency instructions.

Wonder which piece of Patterico’s post tye is objecting to or believes is untrue. Of course that assumes he even bothered to read it. It’s so much simpler for him to jump on a thread with his pre-recorded talking points and insinuate that people are xenophobes and racists.

I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but a modification to the hypothetical:

Let’s pretend that historically you’d trumpeted your house as a place where people could come to make a life for themselves.

Comment by Leviticus — 7/14/2012 @ 8:19 am

Nice try. Yes, we’ve always trumpeted our house as a place where people from all over could make a life for themselves, however, for the last 100+ years we have also had laws and a process on the books regarding legal/illegal entry. So, whether or not we are at the moment checking to see if anyone is coming across and/or doing anything about it, it does not change the fact that there is a willful choice being made to break the law . Thus, the onus remains on the entrant not to break the law.

And, one cannot plead ignorance to said laws. If there was claimed ignorance (Oh, I thought we could come into your house at any time because your welcome sign is out 24/7), one just has to ask why there are so many successful coyotes making thousands of dollars off individuals who typically cross in the dead of night, in the middle of nowhere?

don’t necessarily disagree with you, but a modification to the hypothetical:

Your so-called modification comes very close to reminding me of those who say the impact on a victim of a burglary or robbery needs to be qualified because he had the audacity (the chutzpah! the nerve! the gall!) to drive around in a nice-looking car or because he lived in a nice-looking house. I won’t extend the analogy to the comments of those people who try to equate the way that a woman dresses with whether she’s become a victim of rape or not.

they drive no faster than 55, no matter what the area is posted for, and, if you are at an on-ramp where the sign says either “2″ or “3″ cars per green meter light, they will still go only one at a time.

the other way to tell them is when they hit your car and just keep driving.

Yes, it does. Irish, Chinese, Polish … they, as a collective, have all been “recent” immigrants at one point in our history. Each group has been hated by political conservatives. Now you hate Mexicans. Circle continues… shameful.

tye clearly does not want anyone to address the serious content of Patterico’s post. tye wants only to talk about what he wants to talk about (or what he is being paid to talk about). As has been pointed out, I’m a glass-half-full kind of optimist–and I think today may be the day we say bye bye to tye tye.

In your honor — as a big shout-out and salute to you — I hereby post the following:

calvin-coolidge.org:

Although [Democrat, progressive, US President 1913-1921, winner of the Nobel Prize, champion of the League of Nations, a precursor to the United Nations] Woodrow Wilson received only 5% to 7% of the black vote (in the states where they could vote) [black activists] [Monroe] Trotter and W.E.B. Dubois had backed him, believing anything would be an improvement over the two previous Republican presidents. They were wrong. The new Democratic Congress immediately enacted laws barring racial intermarriage in Washington, DC. Wilson went along. Signs bearing the words “whites only” and “blacks only” began appearing above toilets and drinking fountains throughout the city. Jim Crow practices crept into federal agencies. The number of black presidential appointees dropped sharply – from 33 to 9. Blacks only divisions were created, beginning with the Departments of Treasury, Post Office, Navy, and later the Interior, all headed by Southerners.

When black leaders voiced concern [about blacks-only windows being created in post offices], Wilson told them segregation was necessary because of the friction between [postal] clerks of both races. When Trotter reminded the president that for fifty years, clerks had worked together harmoniously – even during the previous Democratic administrations of Grover Cleveland – Wilson, by his own admission, lost both his temper and his judgment.

[D.W. Griffith's film, "The Birth of a Nation"]…had been based on a novel, The Klansman, [a sympathetic portrayal of the KKK] by Thomas Dixon, a friend of Wilson’s. The President said the production was “like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it’s true.” Others called it “history upside down, complete inversion of historical truth.”

A representative of the Irish American League proclaimed the production a “disgusting, brutal, libel on the colored people of the country.” Harvard’s President Emeritus Charles Eliot denounced the movie as “false history.”
________________________________________

seattletimes.nwsource.com, November 1991

Harry Truman [Democrat, US President 1945-1953, who chastised conservatives/Republicans on the campaign trail, and supported the idea of public healthcare] who made civil rights a federal priority for the first time since Reconstruction, expressed strong racist sentiments before, during and after his presidency, a historian says. Although Truman toned down his racist expressions after entering the White House in 1945, he continued to use racial slurs in private conversation for the rest of his life, said William Leuchtenburg, president of the American Historical Association.

In 1911, the year he turned 27, Truman wrote to his future wife, Bess: “I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a n—– or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man from dust, a n—– from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman.”

“(Uncle Will) does hate Chinese and Japs,” Truman continued. “So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.”

More than 25 years later, Truman, then a U.S. senator from Missouri, wrote a letter to his daughter describing waiters at The White House as “an army of coons.” In a letter to his wife in 1939 he referred to “n—– picnic day.”

Leuchtenburg said recently that some scholars have known about Truman’s racist utterances since his letters were opened. “But somehow,” Leuchtenburg said, “this has not permeated the public consciousness.”
_____________________

frontpagemag.com: Years after Truman left office, [TV producer David] Susskind was working with the former president on a television documentary. Wrote [James] Humes [writer of speeches for five presidents]:

Susskind said that each morning he would arrive at Truman’s house at Independence [Missouri]. He would wait on the porch on a cold February day while Mrs. Truman went to inform her husband of his arrival. After about the fourth morning, he asked the president in his walk why he was never asked inside.

“You’re a Jew, David, and no Jew has ever been in the house.”

A nonplussed Susskind replied, “I am amazed that you who recognized Israel and championed the integration of the army would say such a thing!”

“David,” he explained, “this is not the White House – it’s the Wallace [Bess Truman's maiden name] house. Bess runs it, and there’s never been a Jew inside the house in her or her mother’s lifetime.”

But of course it wasn’t just his wife. As president, Truman was constantly complaining about Jews. At a cabinet meeting in 1946 he angrily remarked, “If Jesus Christ couldn’t satisfy them here on earth, how the hell am I supposed to? I have no use for them and I don’t care what happens to them.”<blockquote

aman.members.sonic.net

Larry Patterson [Clinton's bodyguard in Arkansas] confirmed that he frequently heard Bill Clinton use “n—–” to refer to both Jesse Jackson and local Little Rock black leader Robert “Say” McIntosh. Longtime Clinton paramour Dolly Kyle Browning corroborated Patterson on Clinton’s use of “n—–.” “Not only did he use the ‘N’ word, he called him a ‘GDN’ [goddamn n-----], if you catch my drift,” Browning told Fox News in 1999. [NewsMax, 17 July 2000] Brown also told NewsMax that the president would regularly make derogatory comments about African-Americans in private. “He has used the ‘N’ word before. Bill would make snide remarks about blacks behind their backs.” [Carl Limbacher and NewsMax Staff, 17 July 2000]

Patterson said Hillary was no stranger to the “N” word either. He heard her say “n—–” “probably six, eight, ten times. She would be upset with someone in the black community and she would use the ‘N’ word, like, you heard they’ve got the president’s brother on tape using the ‘N’ word.” [NewsMax, 17 July 2000]

^ Well, if liberals are bigoted, ‘ya gotta hand it to them that they at least have the advantage of being full of common sense. [snerk]

Tye:
The Irish, Chinese and Polish immigrants did so legally during a time when America/USA craved extra workers. Now, we don’t. The extra workers are displacing workers born here.

Don’t give me junk about “jobs Americans won’t do:” My brother is a native/USA born carpenter. That sector is primarily native-born in the his area, and almost exclusively hispanic immigrant in the southeast. Buildings were constructed before the wave of immigration.

Political Conservative is NOT a static group. Bull Collor was a Democrat and Conservative. Conservative being a class of folks tradition-bound and dedicated to existing mores. Plenty of progressives were pro-eugenics, while present day conservatives hate the idea. Translation:You DO NOT get to equate the anti-Irish sentiment to the anti-illegal immigrant sentiment. Don’t try to “travel me back in time” and assume I’d be a racist. That’s just bigoted. I don’t care about color and culture. I care if laws are broken. Latinos and other folks who are here legally and obey laws are an excellent additions to the culture.

The least — absolute least we can expect of tresspassers is that the follow ALL the other laws! Get a license, insurance and register your car. Stop breaking Pat’s dishes.

Who started the “jobs Americans won’t do thingie?” Does anybody remember how or when that depressing and inaccurate meme started to become commonplace in the media and began to be unquestioned and just accepted as truth?

Elissa, I am afraid that it was one of our own, George W. Bush, who started that stupid meme. You are right, it’s demeaning to think that Americans won’t clean hotel rooms, wash dishes, or operate carwashes. Of course they will, but they don’t want to do it for 60 hours/week at $6 per hour. Not when it is so easy to get foodstamps and welfare or go on disability.

Yes, it does. Irish, Chinese, Polish … they, as a collective, have all been “recent” immigrants at one point in our history. Each group has been hated by political conservatives. Now you hate Mexicans. Circle continues… shameful.
Comment by tye — 7/14/2012 @ 10:57 am

– Playing the same card over and over again, regardless of circumstance, is what experienced players refer to as a “tell”.

I don’t think it was Bush 43 who started the “jobs Americans won’t do” meme. This Chicago Tribune article dated January 5, 1995, shows people were already using that phrase in the early 1990′s:

Welfare (plus food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid and other benefits) enables many of the poor to avoid jobs they could do. Yet these jobs are good enough to lure millions of immigrants to the United States; they manage to find the work, wherever it is, even if they lack education and fluency in English. It’s ironic to argue we need immigrants to do jobs Americans won’t, while we pay Americans welfare so they don’t have to work.

But I agree George W. Bush seems to have embraced this false concept. I always thought Bush was channeling Pauline Kael.

#112 Happyfeet Yes, the much-adored kennedy dynasty. Pray tell, why? Who sold us on that bill of goods? Funny how The Chicago Way played such a big role in JFK’s election. Of course Dick Nixon didn’t much cry about it. I think he was correct when he told the press they wouldn’t have him to kick around anymore. In the sense that the media gave him a hard time well prior to his eventual successful Presidential run. I voted for Wallace, given the animosity I felt from Philly-area blacks at the time. Had a grand time putting Wallace bumper stickers on cars of blacks.
So one wonders how things will be played out. Will Hillary ever be Potus? Somehow that lying sack of spit is deemed the most popular political figure? Will Urkel’s admirers be elated if he is either re-elected or declares martial law/suspension of elections/starts war with Iran? Will there be a push to give him endless terms in office? US troops training in urban St.Louis? crickets. Media doesn’t care about that. Fast and Furious? Yawn.
I guess the Kennedys remain deities to the Massachusetts populace and Teddy forever the liberal lion of the Senate but still amused by http://fatboy.cc

There are a lot of qualities I would like to see in Americans but the main quality is that they are law-abiding. The key to an orderly society is a law-abiding population, because there will never be enough law enforcement agents to force everyone to obey society’s rules if we don’t do it voluntarily.

IMO the key to a law-abiding population is the widespread perception that the rules apply to everyone equally. I’m sure you realize this but the immigration “rules” — especially as envisioned by liberals and as applied by the Obama Administration — don’t apply to everyone equally.

I think Mitt Romney has the potential to be a very good President. He has the character and the experience to be a good leader. The big question is who he will choose as advisers, but there are reasons to believe he is secure enough to pick competent people.

Too many Presidents pick weak advisers because they aren’t secure enough to pick real leaders who will challenge them. That was actually one of George W. Bush’s strengths. He wasn’t afraid to pick advisers who were strong and who held strong opinions.

ericpw–don’t even waste our time and yours calling people “silly” and parroting polls which for the most part are incorrectly weighted for current conditions if one knows how to read crosstabs. The R. “landslide” hopefully comes in Nov. when votes are cast in the privacy of the voting booth. There is no sane reason at this point “just to concentrate on the congress” as (for some reason) you’d like us to do.

DRJ, gary, and JFW–thank you for responding to and researching my “jobs Americans won’t do” question while I was out having fun in the sun.

Several years ago here in Minneapolis the StarTribune (the RedStar) ran a similar article asking “Do illegal immigrants have a higher crime rate than legal immigrants?” I wrote a letter to the editor basically saying “Yes, they do. They have a 100% crime rate because, well, they’re here illegally.” To my surprise they actually published it.

EPWJ–your own contribution then to restoring some semblance of sanity and order in the United States is to discourage and pooh pooh anyone else who might see another option, and instead you will just blithely allow Barack Obama to be re-elected without even a fight because supporting Romney is too haaaaard. I call BS on that. I see your true colors shining through.

The subject of this thread is about criminal deeds done by illegal immigrants and I don’t want to contribute to a threadjack. But since a commenter here is pushing nonsense– claiming the utter hopelessness of the Romney campaign— I offer the following read for anyone who maintains an open mind. Yesterday, Jim Geraghty at the National Review took on Pew by asking why so many pollsters oversample democrats and he documented the long history of them doing so–

After being wrong in the same direction so consistently, wouldn’t you think that Pew might attempt to adjust their sampling techniques to avoid under-sampling Republican voters? Keep in mind the polls I have highlighted are the last polls in the race. I find it interesting that not one of their poll statisticians came out and said, ‘Boss, these results look whacked out because the electorate is going to be more than 24 percent Republican, and self-identified Democrats aren’t going to outpace Republicans by 9 percentage points.’ The Democrats couldn’t even reach that margin in 2008 . . . and you wonder why so many people think Obama is going to win. Didn’t Einstein once say the definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. So I ask are the people at Pew insane or just biased?

EricPW – With your record of honesty and accuracy on this blog, I don’t give what you say much credence.

Not sure if he’s a closeted liberal or extremely squishy “centrist.” He may be very similar to a person I was reading about a few days ago (I think it was a federal judge appointed by Bush Sr—or something like that), who said in an interview that today’s Republican Party (and presumably anything a bit right of center) had been taken over by ideologues.

This from a person residing in an era when in order to be a good “centrist,” one must be increasingly supportive of same-sex marriage, supportive of a slightly (just slightly) watered-down version of Obamacare, concerned about the environmental impact of the stuff we breathe out every few seconds (ie, carbon dioxide), and tolerant of an amount of illegal immigration that would make the head spin of people back in the 1950s, when even the program to forcibly remove the so-called undocumented at that time — implemented under Dwight Eisenhower — was labeled the very, very non-PC title of “Operation Wetback.”

Yea, uh-huh, Republicans and the right side of the socio-political spectrum in 2012 are so, so dogmatic, so very extreme. Yep, uh-huh.

Fair as far as it goes. But from one spouting such froth, that was an “events remaining as they were” in linear, gradual decline.

Today 1000 counties in 26 states are declared disasters due to drought(See McCabe 2004 on PDO&AMO effects at NOAA). We are reprising early 30′s climatic events(see Dust Bowl, High Plains).

Swiss and German two year bills negative, Spain over 7%, Italy closing in on same, Japanese manufacturing sharply negative, same in Germany, official Chinese growth 7%(i.e. none), oil holding its own, homes flat, BDI returning to record lows, trucking down, only rails Ok.

Gallup has Belial’s avatar in negative approval. He is dead. I predict less than 22% of eligible voters will opt to re-elect.

We are in recession, U3 is holding only because states are running out the 99 week clock. Labor participation will be at Greater Depression levels by November.

It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, best exemplified by what’s going on in Spain. That country allowed Socialists to run rampant over the past several years, then recently turned to the “center-right.” Only problem is the “center-right” — at least how it’s defined in Europe — apparently is just barely better than, or just as bad as, what the ultra-liberals are all about.

So much for the common sense and reliability of philosophical squishiness (eg, Bush Jr being a soft touch on illegal immigration, Justice John Roberts’ contortionist routine on Obamacare, Herbert Hoover in the 1930s introducing the tax-and-spend policies of his successor).

I have a hunch that Europeans like Spain’s prime minister are analogous to Americans like Arnold Schwarzenegger, either in terms of circumstances (ie, a non-leftist trying to maneuver amidst liberalism gone berserk) or in terms of being about as ideologically firm as a bucket of jello.

cnbc.com, July 11: Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced a swathe of new taxes and spending cuts on Wednesday designed to slash 65 billion euros from the budget deficit by 2014 as recession-plagued Spain struggles to meet tough targets agreed with Europe.

Rajoy, of the center-right People’s Party, proposed a 3-point hike in the main rate of Value Added Tax on goods and services to 21 percent, and outlined cuts in unemployment benefit and civil service pay and perks in a parliamentary speech interrupted by jeers and boos from the opposition. He also announced new indirect taxes on energy, plans to privatize ports, airports and rail assets, and a reversal of property tax breaks that his party had restored last December.

However, he did not touch pensions — keeping one election promise — and said the tax burden was being shifted from direct taxes on labor and income to taxation on consumption.

With five years of economic stagnation and recession, unemployment at 24.4 percent and tax revenue falling, Spain is struggling to meet tough deficit cutting targets agreed with the European Union.

Rajoy announced reforms to city hall governments, shutdowns of public companies, reduced benefits for civil servants, budget cuts for political parties and labor unions.

The prime minister, who had pledged in his election campaign last year not to raise VAT, said he now had no choice. The main rate will rise to 21 from 18 percent and the reduced rate to 10 from 8 percent in a move that could further depress consumer spending.

With nearly one quarter of the workforce and more than half of young Spaniards without a job, the government said unemployment benefit would fall to 50 percent of previous earnings from 60 percent after the first six months on the dole. Rajoy said the measure was intended to increase the incentive to look for work.

Well you have to consider Mark, that the PP’s predecessors, typified by the late Manuel Fraga, where suffused with Francoism, which was skeptical
of free wheeling capitalism, Aznar was likely the exception,

Times will be, overall, worse than BlameBoosh inherited. Economic RESET is a given.

Amerikkka is resilient and I don’t expect 25% U3, our standard of living is vastly better than ’33-’36, but government has failed, the economic system has failed and all team R knows in preparation is managing their portfolios.

They had made all their plans on that basis. They had a whole bunch of negative attacks mostly related to Bain Capital, worked out. But Romney’s people kept on saying Romney is the strongest candidate and Obama couldn’t possibly want him to win the nomination.

A helpful hint, since my looking up his background points to how in a society like Spain, even the non-leftists are more socialistic than not. So, in general terms, such people can be characterized as being — in certain crucial ways — extremely squishy, no less prone to having deflated common sense on occasion as what the so-called center-right in super-blue states like California or ultra-blue cities like New York, San Francisco or LA may be guilty of.

politicsinspires.org: Under [Manuel Fraga's] leadership, [his homeland of] Galicia [Spain] prospered substantially, though not as much as Fraga had hoped, in part because he preferred state-run economies as opposed to markets, and adopted Gaullist-like economic policies with strong state planning, rather than free market programmes./i>

Well, yes, and no, this tradition precedes the left as we commonly understand it, the Conservatives as in Latin America, were for the landed elite, the Liberals, the Sarmientos, the Juarez’s, were more
classically oriented,

i> And, one cannot plead ignorance to said laws.
Not ignorance of course. It’s just that you cannot knock the idea out of people’s heads that they have a right to come. because after all, that’s what people did throughout human history.

As it says in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal , that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness – that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

As long as people in Mexico etc believe that, your never going to knock out the idea from their heads they have a right to come, when there really is no other way to pursue happiness.

There isn’t a right to immigrate to America, either under American or international law. But the U.S. does have the right to secure its borders and provide for orderly immigration.

What you seem to be arguing is that there is (or should be) a natural/moral right to live, work, and travel where one pleases. But our society is founded on law and property rights, not social justice.

“But our society is founded on law and property rights, not social justice.”

DRJ – That would seem to come from the “that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” portion of the Declaration quoted by Sammy.

Holding the U.S. responsible for accommodating the all the beliefs of people in other countries, whether or not they comply with our laws, is a non-starter.

Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 7/14/2012 @ 7:59 pm
I suppose it’s impractical to think that they might just fix their own country (again)?
When you’ve had as many “revolutions” as has Mexico, to so little effect; you have to think that the real problem is “something in the water”.

Not ignorance of course. It’s just that you cannot knock the idea out of people’s heads that they have a right to come. because after all, that’s what people did throughout human history.

As it says in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal , that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness – that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

As long as people in Mexico etc believe that, your never going to knock out the idea from their heads they have a right to come, when there really is no other way to pursue happiness.

Sammy,

This is a confusing statement, because on one hand you are referencing *our* Declaration of Independence and concluding that as long “as people in Mexico etc believe that, your never going to knock out the idea from their heads they have a right to come, when there really is no other way to pursue happiness.”, and yet if they recognize and have a belief in this document (which I do not believe at all is any part of an illegal immigrant’s decision making), then they must in turn also give the same measure of respect for the same nation’s laws that provide and protect the citizens’ safety, thus ensuring the pursuit of happiness can indeed be available to them. IOW, you dont’ get to claim to believe the DoI and give it respect, without giving our laws the same respect.

(Original article headline on page 22 of the July 16-July 22 Bloomberg Business Week.)

Both Obama and Romney have held closed door fundraisers. The $40,000 actually was for a May 10 Obama event at George Clooney’s home. Romney charges $50,000.

Back in 2008, at a San Francisco fundraiser Obama “explained” that small town voters are “bitter” and “cling to guns of religion” That was secretly recorded by an attendee. Now Obama lets in the press to record boilerplate remarks at any event wher he is to speak, then shoos them out. He may ask people not to release video and or confiscate cell phones and put them in plastic bags before letting people in.

In April Romney was overheard (he was near the border of the property and reporters were standing on the sidewalk) at a backyard fundraiser saying he might abolish the Department of Housing and Urban Development and eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction for second homes. (He also talked about eliminating the state income tax deduction! And the property tax deduction.)

here is a very… odd – or what would have been considered odd not long at all ago – article about how the government should bottle-feed us like foundling kittens

the whole thing is about home-equity loans and how the people what took them out are all underwater like flipper flipper faster than lightning

I would just like to highlight a few passages if I may

These are among the riskiest loans in any bank’s portfolio. As borrowers are pressed to pay principal and interest, write-offs are almost certain to rise.

It didn’t have to be this way, for borrowers at least. Had the loan modification programs created by the Treasury Department required banks to write down junior liens more aggressively, homeowners would not be facing a wave of increased payments. But Treasury did not, and its stance allowed the second-lien problem to balloon.

yes – when we hear all that talk about how people used to use their homes as a piggy bank – this is what that’s referring to – and the NYT says the obama government should’ve forced banks to take a haircut on that?

For reals?

Really?

That’s so …

really?

Yup.

As Laurie Goodman, an analyst at Amherst Securities, testified to Congress last year, neither of the Treasury’s loan modification programs dealt appropriately with second liens, which include home equity credit lines.

there’s a buncha blah blah blah about how some people in some program did get to knock a little off of what they had to pay back for raiding the piggy bank … but the whole thing ends on a sour note

Payment shock for borrowers is nigh. For those who are already struggling to pay their mortgages, this is an unwelcome burden. And it is one that might have been avoided.

yeah they coulda lived within their means instead of borrowing like they had the golden willy wonka ticket in their grubby little loser hands

Our founding fathers considered the pursuit of happiness to be the pursuit of a virtuous life. In history words change in meaning. For instance gay used to mean happy, not homosexual. That’s why why when interpreting old documents they cant be interpreted in light of today’s meaning, but the meaning and culture at the time the document was written.

The next election could be decided by how many illegal aliens come across our borders to vote. They could be also be coming for free education, welfare and a ebt card. And to drive without a license or insurance. But not to kill. That just happens sometimes.
Jeesh.

Bad laws, too? Unnecessary laws, too? Cruel laws, too? Do you evaluate what the law is worth before you advocate tougher enforcement, or not? Are you for enforcing laws to the hilt just because they are laws?

What about illegal downloading of software?

Importing prescription medicines from Canada or Mexico?

Are you for a crackdown on that?

Sammy, I am also for overturning through the ballott box those laws which are either immoral or “bad.”
As much as I’m sure you figure the dabate is all about imported viagara from Newfoundland, and illegally downloaded software, it is not.

Crackdown is not the proper term, since this administration has decided not to enforce the laws on the books. It’s not a crackdown if all anybody wants is enforcement.

They have taken the position that some laws are just NOT important enough to be enforced — even when enforcement would be a natural part of police and prosecution otherwise. For example, if the police pull me over while I transport 10,000 pills illegally from Canada, I’m in trouble way beyond my busted taillight. But if I didn’t actually come from the country I claim — then that is apparently okay because the government has chosen NOT to enforce that law.

By the way, you’re shipment is on the way.

Routinely people who have crossed into the US illegally and who have faked their identification documents are arrested or detained for a minor thing, and then tossed back into the community with no further action regarding immigration status. I was born here. If I fake my ID and show it to the police, I am going to be arrested on the spot.

Don’t blame me if enforcing something will be onerous. I didn’t let this get to this point. The government encourages a illegal immigration through non-enforcement.

And by the way, sometimes Canadian and Mexican meds are not the genuine article, and are unhealthy fakes. And I always pay for my software. Always. I know you find that hard to understand, because you believe minor fraud is so forgivable. Apparently you don’t invest in medical research or write software for a living. What business are you involved in, that I can go ahead and rip you off?

If your problem is too many laws, I’m on your side. So, talk to your reps about getting that nasty “no software stealing” law eliminated if it bothers you so. Hell, I’ll support a lifting/eliminating of tons of laws. I jumped into this because someone suggested that conservatives are clearly the ones who would have been anti-immigrant bigots in the days of Ellis Island. Those people came here legally. Their first act was to legally join the American system of laws. Contrast this with folks whose first act is to break the laws at the boarder, fake their ID, and operate frauds against their employers and the Social Security Admin. (Making a mess of a messy system. Wait until these guys working under someone elses numbers start to retire and demand benefits.) There seems to be a qualitative difference between those two experiences, and that difference hurts our nation.

I think you should have options regarding third-world manufactured medicines and off-brand hip replacements.

But since most every country on the globe demands that immigrants go through a legal process, and since our laws also demand a legal process, then lets enforce the laws which exist.

Bad laws, too? Unnecessary laws, too? Cruel laws, too? Do you evaluate what the law is worth before you advocate tougher enforcement, or not? Are you for enforcing laws to the hilt just because they are laws?

What about illegal downloading of software?

Importing prescription medicines from Canada or Mexico?

Are you for a crackdown on that?”

ukuleledave – Seriously, where does thinking like this originate?

Who is going to rank the hierarchy of laws we are permitted to break?

Will the list be the same for each person?

Judge, I deemed that was a bad law so I decided I was allowed to break it. Sorry moron, guilty!

High school friend killed by an illegal who ran a red light while being chased by Mesa, Az police. Illegal was pulled over 6 days prior by Mesa police for no tags on vehicle or drivers license. Since Mesa is a sanctuary city no papers etc were checked and he was given a traffic ticket and sent on his way. Case went to trial and taxpayers paid for lawyers and interpreter. His defense was that the coyote he paid to smuggle him into the US was in the vehicle with a gun to his head, yet they both ran from the vehicle after they hit and killed my friend. He was convicted and appealled the case all the way to the AZ Supreme Court. His sentence was upheld because there was a death involved. Had AZ 1070 been in effect she would still be alive and her two kids lives wouldn’t be so rotten now. They sued the Mesa PD for various infractions in a long expensive trial and got nothing!!!! How can people not be crazy outraged. In the 15 years I lived there the decline was staggering. I honestly don’t have a strong enough word to convey what is happening.

101- I thought our black president was a Democrat? Weird. Perhaps you should amend that statement.

Comment by tye — 7/14/2012 @ 11:35 am

Ethnically or Culturally?
Ethnically: he’s of mixed White American-KENYAN background
Culturally: he was raised by his white mother, and white grandparents as a radical leftist.

Given those two factors, I would say that he has little or no connection, with anything that resembles the average black American experience.
He’s “black” only in so far as he matches the leftist fixation with his skin color. If he were to wake up tomorrow morning as a blond haired blue eyed Aryan type, and continued to behave, speak, and act in exactly the same manner as he does now; would there be any cultural signs as to his “blackness”.

– That’s a terrible, tragic story; but, unfortunately, all too believable. I lived in Mesa for five years once . . . once. Worst tap water ever! (you couldn’t quite light it on fire, but you could fill your pool with it and not need to add chemicals) I was robbed a quarter mile away from a police substation, and they never caught the guys. And then you add “sanctuary city” on top of it . . .

If he [Obama] were to wake up tomorrow morning as a blond haired blue eyed Aryan type, and continued to behave, speak, and act in exactly the same manner as he does now; would there be any cultural signs as to his “blackness”.

Routinely people who have crossed into the US illegally and who have faked their identification documents are arrested or detained for a minor thing, and then tossed back into the community with no further action regarding immigration status. I was born here. If I fake my ID and show it to the police, I am going to be arrested on the spot.

???

What are you talking about? Sometimes people get arrested for not have any IDS (when otherwise they would be given a ticket. People under 21 often use fake Ids to buy alcohol

(a law which was forced on the states by the way. The Supreme Court upheld it in South Dakota v Dole 483 US 203, claiming it was not coercive and was also germane to the purpose of the money – interstate highway safety. It was coercive, and so was the national 55 MPH speed limit, because not one state declined to go along. But anyway the court had held that. Although no state deviated from the 21 year old rule in any way. You could have come up with ideas that didn’t involve encouraging driving across state lines to buy liquor. And the 55 MPH speed limit was only repealed at the federal level. In NFIB v Sebelius, Chief Justice Roberts did not overrule Dole in any way but held the Medicaid expansion (because it put all Medicaid at risk) was more coercive than the 5% reduction in highway funds in the Dole case. In her dissent, Justice Ginsberg argued it was less coercive, because states were not being coerced to spend very much more extra money)

Anyway as I was saying, people under 21 often use fake Ids to buy alcohol, but they are only arrested (or charged) with buying or consuming alcohol, not with possessing fake IDs. The usual response to fake IDs, is just to confiscate it. People manufacturing it or providing it may get a little more, but it only becomes serious if one of the people they give it to turns out to be a terrorist.

The crimes the migrants face — extortion, rape, kidnapping and murder — have become so brazen and brutal that Mexicans can no longer ignore them. As the horrors have multiplied, Father Solalinde’s demands for the migrants’ protection have begun to resonate.

“Things have changed a lot,” Father Solalinde said in an interview here this week. “The total invisibility of not seeing the migrants, of not knowing what was happening to them, all the different abuses, which are growing more serious, more violent, has passed. I have become famous because of the migrants, because people are concerned about them.”

… After he spent years presenting evidence of abuses to the authorities, to no effect, a handful of state police officers have been put on trial, although none have served prison time. The federal government has taken on an investigation into one prominent attack on migrants and this week presented him with a chart showing more than 40 suspects.

Still, neither the federal nor state government has made any progress in figuring out where the latest death threats came from. He seemed unperturbed about going home, though.

“I discovered that when you are not afraid, they respect you more,” he said. “Bit by bit, I got stronger, I learned and lost the fear.”

The story of Father Solalinde’s mission is entwined with the slow acceptance of an essential hypocrisy here: for all the complaints about the mistreatment of Mexican immigrants in the United States, Central and South Americans face far worse as they travel across Mexico.

The massacre of 72 migrants, whose bodies were found in August 2010 on a ranch in the northern border state of Tamaulipas, brought home the reality of the dangers to migrants.

The following April, the authorities found 193 bodies in mass graves not far away, many believed to be migrants kidnapped from buses traveling toward the border shared by Mexico and the United States. Experts believe that as many as 22,000 migrants are kidnapped a year, based on testimony compiled by the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico.

But victims are usually too afraid to complain, and the families who might speak for them are far away and often ignorant of what occurred…

Cruelty toward the Rohingyas is not new. They have faced torture, neglect and repression in the Buddhist-majority land since it achieved independence in 1948. Its constitution closes all options for Rohingyas to be citizens, on grounds that their ancestors didn’t live there when the land, once called Burma, came under British rule in the 19th century (a contention the Rohingyas dispute). Even now, as military rulers have begun to loosen their grip, there is no sign of change for the Rohingyas. Instead, the Burmese are trying to cast them out.

The current violence can be traced to the rape and killing in late May of a Buddhist woman, for which the police reportedly detained three Muslims. That was followed by mob attacks on Rohingyas and other Muslims that killed dozens of people. According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, state security forces have now conducted mass arrests of Muslims; they destroyed thousands of homes, with the impact falling most heavily on the Rohingyas. Displaced Rohingyas have tried to flee across the Naf River to neighboring Bangladesh; some have died in the effort.

The Burmese media have cited early rioting by Rohingyas and have cast them as terrorists and traitors. In mid-June, in the name of stopping such violence, the government declared a state of emergency. But it has used its border security force to burn houses, kill men and evict Rohingyas from their villages. And on Thursday, President Thein Sein suggested that Myanmar could end the crisis by expelling all of its Rohingyas or by having the United Nations resettle them — a proposal that a United Nations official quickly rejected.

This is not sectarian violence; it is state-supported ethnic cleansing, and the nations of the world aren’t pressing Myanmar’s leaders to stop it. Even Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has not spoken out…

They don’t have birthright citizenship in Burma, so you can have inherited illegality and the problem doesn’t go away with time. Notice here they take one crime by one person and that becomes an excuse to persecute the entire group.

All over the world, people violate immigration laws, and all over the world, people get killed crossing borders.. This is not an example for the United States of America.

Given those two factors, I would say that he has little or no connection, with anything that resembles the average black American experience.

Regrettably, he does share the one bond that unfortunately ties so many people — far too many people — in black America together: he’s of the left, a stanch, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat/liberal.

I got into a somewhat tense debate awhile back with a person (who happens to be black) and I mentioned to her that instead of her or others always focusing on race, race, race — which she likes to do from a woe-is-me angle and, in turn, a jealousy-resentment angle directed at whites/non-blacks (ie, Asians and Latinos) — she instead think of people based on their ideological characteristics. She was rather nonplussed with my recommendation.

Don’t blame me if enforcing something will be onerous. I didn’t let this get to this point.

Since when is the new situation irrelevant. Let’s bring back debtors prison, too maybe. Let’s collect all back taxes.

The government encourages a illegal immigration through non-enforcement.

Non-enforcement is the natural state of affairs.

And by the way, sometimes Canadian and Mexican meds are not the genuine article, and are unhealthy fakes.

This is a bit of a problem, but it also happens with meds sold in the United States.

And I always pay for my software. Always. I know you find that hard to understand, because you believe minor fraud is so forgivable.

If other people didn’t steal software, or download music, it would be much more expensive for you. We’d still have copy protection. There would not e 99 cent downloads. They could even go for limited licenses. We are seeing this with e-books. But what I am talking about is the idea of a crackdown simply because something is not legal. What happened with me is I got sold a computer without a DOS manual, so I suppose the operating system was pirated by the retailer. He also neglected to include a printer port, – what I thought was a printer port was a cassette interface – as I discovered a year later, and it had to be sent back and a second one was installed. Software reported I now had two printer ports.

A lot of software is orphaned.

If your problem is too many laws, I’m on your side. So, talk to your reps about getting that nasty “no software stealing” law eliminated if it bothers you so.

What I’d really like is a 3 year copyright period for software, starting from the first 1000 sales.

Hell, I’ll support a lifting/eliminating of tons of laws. I jumped into this because someone suggested that conservatives are clearly the ones who would have been anti-immigrant bigots in the days of Ellis Island. Those people came here legally. Their first act was to legally join the American system of laws. Contrast this with folks whose first act is to break the laws at the boarder, fake their ID, and operate frauds against their employers and the Social Security Admin.

They had no possibility of abiding by the law.

The real mess in the Social Security system is that people who worked for some years under other names can’t get credit. This needs to be straightened out.

(Making a mess of a messy system. Wait until these guys working under someone elses numbers start to retire and demand benefits.)

That gets caught when the real person objects. It gets caught the next year. We are getting more of this stuff because it is getting harder to invent fictitious people. That’s not a good change.

People in Florida used to file tax returns in the names of dead people (using Social Security from the Social Security Death index. Then they stopped publishing dead people’s Social Security numbers. Then they did prisoners. Now they are using real elderly people, obtaining the numbers from phramnacies or wherever, and really messing things up. The government now offers as a refund
option debit cards, which are not tied to any identifiable person like a bank account would be and they get around tracing through the mail delivery system by erecting fake mailboxes in front of foreclosed houses in defunct communities, and sometimes by robbing the mail carriers.

You know you have to think a whole system through. They don’t do that. But one guarantee. I you have millions of people trying to figure a way around some controls, a way will surely be found. If you want to avoid compromising of controls, you must reduce the number of people who have an incentive to do so.

But placed against the backdrop of the interesting ironies of both the US in the past and Mexico generally of today, that statement does need an asterisk placed next to it.

pbs.org:

Operation Wetback

In 1949 the Border Patrol seized nearly 280,000 illegal immigrants. By 1953, the numbers had grown to more than 865,000, and the U.S. government felt pressured to do something about the onslaught of immigration. What resulted was Operation Wetback, devised in 1954 under the supervision of new commissioner of the Immigration and Nationalization Service, Gen. Joseph Swing.

Swing oversaw the Border patrol, and organized state and local officials along with the police. The object of his intense border enforcement were “illegal aliens,” but common practice of Operation Wetback focused on Mexicans in general. The police swarmed through Mexican American barrios throughout the southeastern states. Some Mexicans, fearful of the potential violence of this militarization, fled back south across the border. In 1954, the agents discovered over 1 million illegal immigrants.

In some cases, illegal immigrants were deported along with their American-born children, who were by law U.S. citizens. The agents used a wide brush in their criteria for interrogating potential aliens. They adopted the practice of stopping “Mexican-looking” citizens on the street and asking for identification. This practice incited and angered many U.S. citizens who were of Mexican American descent. Opponents in both the United States and Mexico complained of “police-state” methods, and Operation Wetback was abandoned.

usatoday.com, May 2010:

Arizona’s new law forcing local police to take a greater role in enforcing immigration law has caused a lot of criticism from Mexico, the largest single source of illegal immigrants in the United States. But in Mexico, illegal immigrants receive terrible treatment from corrupt Mexican authorities, say people involved in the system.

And Mexico has a law that is no different from Arizona’s that empowers local police to check the immigration documents of people suspected of not being in the country legally.

“The Mexican government should probably clean up its own house before looking at someone else’s,” said Melissa Vertíz, spokeswoman for the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, Mexico.

In one six-month period from September 2008 through February 2009, at least 9,758 migrants were kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico — 91 of them with the direct participation of Mexican police, a report by the National Human Rights Commission said. Other migrants are routinely stopped and shaken down for bribes, it said.

Abuses by Mexican authorities have persisted even as Mexico has relaxed its rules against illegal immigrants in recent years, according to the National Human Rights Commission. In 2008, Mexico softened the punishment for illegal immigrants, from a maximum 10 years in prison to a maximum fine of $461. Most detainees are taken to detention centers and put on buses for home.

Mexican law calls for six to 12 years of prison and up to $46,000 in fines for anyone who shelters or transports illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the law applies only to people who do it for money.

…Article 67 of Mexico’s immigration law requires that all authorities “whether federal, local or municipal” demand to see visas if approached by a foreigner and to hand over migrants to immigration authorities.

To discourage migrants from speaking out about abuse, Mexican authorities often tell detainees they will have to stay longer in detention centers if they file a complaint, Vertíz said.

Dave: Hell, I’ll support a lifting/eliminating of tons of laws. I jumped into this because someone suggested that conservatives are clearly the ones who would have been anti-immigrant bigots in the days of Ellis Island. Those people came here legally. Their first act was to legally join the American system of laws. Contrast this with folks whose first act is to break the laws at the boarder, fake their ID, and operate frauds against their employers and the Social Security Admin.

Sammy:They had no possibility of abiding by the law.

The real mess in the Social Security system is that people who worked for some years under other names can’t get credit. This needs to be straightened out.

(Making a mess of a messy system. Wait until these guys working under someone elses numbers start to retire and demand benefits.)

That gets caught when the real person objects. It gets caught the next year. We are getting more of this stuff because it is getting harder to invent fictitious people. That’s not a good change.

Sammy, the system should not reward those who invented fictitious people, or who used false numbers, or who committed fraud at all. Is that so hard? My point was:One day our already broken Soc. Sec. system will have to untangle the lies.
I bolded the above statement because it seems impossible that you really think the relative ease in which fraud is committed matters.

As I’ve said before, Sammy’s raison d’être is to play devil’s advocate for contrary positions that are not fact-based, but only “supported” by ‘Finkelman Logic’ — i.e. they tend to only make sense if you move the goal posts into the stands or out into the parking lot.

OK, that was a shock – I’ve known this for years {back when I still watched Bill Maher & Maxine Waters was bemoaning those poor poor ripped off loanees, blech} Anyway, the shock is that happyfeet gets it!!!

And if we all are required to use the same beanbag ammo our government forces Border Patrol agents to fire at the illegals who are wielding the AK-47s our government has provided them with, our homes will be perfectly safe for those illegals to break into.

You know, while they’re in the process of making life better for their families.

Making life better for you, me, Clarisse Grime, or Brian Terry doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar screen.

it is wrong to break the immigration laws, but almost everybody does it why to make a better life for their families

In your opinion which major wildfire started by illegal aliens seeking a better life for their families best reflects their inherent nobility, Mr. Feets?

Some people believe it was one of the Horseshoe canyon fires, but my vote has to go to the Monument fire that greatly contributed to the erosion that eventually cut the town of Tombstone off from it’s water source.

Nothing reeks of simple human dignity so much as a major conflagration. Perhaps because it destroys the garbage that illegals strew about as they trash the landscape on their march north.

Speaking of human dignity, what about the dignity of people I know in Arizona who can’t go on vacation without hiring a house sitter as if they leave their house won’t remain unoccupied for very long. People who’ve eventually thrown up their hands and moved away from the border because they couldn’t put up with the shear amount of the traffic. And the commotion. Perhaps it’s something less of a tragedy, but I know people who’ve given up what used to be pretty desirable hunting leases that in some cases had been in the family for generations because it just wasn’t worth it.

Still something was lost. Quite a bit. Illegal aliens make lousy neighbors. When they aren’t littering the landscape with their garbage or torching it with their campfires they can’t be bothered to put out when they move on, they can be pretty violent to boot. Not an exception, as a rule. Perhaps because our government encourages that sort of ‘tude.

Barack Obama has developed quite a record as a liar. He lied for more than a decade about where he was born. He lied about many aspects of his life in his fictional “memoir.” He lied about his Chicago years and his activities and associations there. (Has anyone ever asked the question, what did Obama do when he lived in Chicago, and whom did he know there, since it seems that all of the activities and associations of which we have a record are now, as Nixon might say, inoperative.) To answer my own question, I think a candidate likely can lie his way into office, but I doubt that in incumbent president can lie his way to re-election. For the first time in his life, apparently, Barack Obama has a record.

I don’t know exactly what Obama thinks he’s doing on the immigration issue despite trying to scare hispanic voters to keep them on the reservation (just like the democrats are trying to scare black voters).

But the thing is, Obama thinks no one is on to him. That’s what the sycophants he surrounds himself with tell him, and that’s what the media lapdogs tell hem when they aren’t using their tongues to give him a bath.

But everyone’s on to him. You’d think someone who lies so frequently about everything might actually get good at it what with all the practice. Nope. Not the genius manchild in the WH.

I don’t think he even knows what a good lie would look or sound like. Which probably explains why he thinks his mouthpiece Carney is doing a bang up job.

The owner of the copyright forced YouTube to take down a Romney video ad, that included of Obama singing a song, but had not asked for the Obama video itself to be taken down. They did now, after it was pnted out, but Al Green singing it is still unobjected to.

The interesting thing is, the law was probably not on the copyright owner’s side.

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